


The Future Starts So Slow

by heavydirtysoldier (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Political Animals
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Political Animals Spoilers, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4481672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/heavydirtysoldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ABANDONED - please read Author's Note in Chapter 3]<br/>James Buchanan Barnes died in the winter of 1945, leaving his best guy behind. Thirty-seven years later, he was reborn as Thomas James Hammond. At thirty years old TJ began to remember who he was--the man who fell from the train. Bucky never believed in second chances, but this sure did feel like one. </p><p>~</p><p>AU in which TJ Hammond is the reincarnation of Bucky Barnes </p><p>[un-beta'd]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Man in Red, White, and Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this [post](http://hvydrtysoldier.tumblr.com/post/124461969363/au-where-tj-hammond-is-the-reincarnation-of-bucky).
> 
> In this universe, the Winter Soldier doesn't exist but TJ Hammond does.
> 
> The title of the story comes from the theme song of Political Animals: "Future Starts Slow" by The Kills. You don't have to necessarily watch Political Animals to understand the story, but it will help with giving you an understanding about certain characters and who's who. And I'll be giving you a warning now, if you haven't watched Political Animals or are planning to (and you should because it's really good and Sebastian Stan does a fantastic job at being very sad and very gay), there will be spoilers for the show, but not a lot.
> 
> And also another warning. I'm not so sure if I'll ever be able to update anytime soon, so you can treat this as a stand alone or you can be hopeful and see this as the first chapter towards a whirlwind mess of crazy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TJ is aware.

_"There's gotta be a rope or somethin'!"_

_“Just go! Get outta here!"_

_“No! Not without you!"_

A voice, so much like his own, rang clearly in his subconscious. It was tinged with terror—pure, unadulterated fear—and just the sound of it almost made him want to choke on his own bile, the urge to vomit so strong and burning his throat. He could feel the emotion coursing through him like it was his own, as if this wasn’t a dream but a memory, as if he was the one screaming. Screaming across blazing fires, over the bombs that had been detonating one after the other, over the rumbles of the quaking floor beneath his feet.

He felt detached, an out-of-body experience that left him reeling, but he also felt so connected with the one tearing his throat hoarse with every scream. He just didn’t know why.  

He didn't know where the other voice was coming from. It was deep and unshakeable, but there was still a hint of fear that was telling him otherwise. It sounded familiar, like he had heard it before. In a dream or in another life, but that suddenly felt so long ago. 

A flash of blond, a strong jaw set with determination, and a pair of blue eyes as clear as the sky jarred the remnants of the emotion that rattled on painfully in his chest, his heart hammering against his ribcage with such ferocity that it drowned out the booming explosions that surrounded him. 

What was he doing here? 

What did all of this mean?

Why the fuck was everything exploding? 

Heat radiated, hot and scorching, against his face. He almost felt like a candle left forgotten with a flickering flame for hours on end, melting into nothing but a puddle of wax. He was more than certain that the building was on the verge of a collapse. Were the explosions set off on purpose?

Self-destruct. Time was running out.

A man suddenly materialized in front of him, and through the wall of fire and smoke, he could faintly make out the big, white 'A' painted on the blue helmet atop the man's head. He saw red, white, and blue across the way. He saw the fear on the other man's face, but the smoke continued to billow around them, a blanket of ash and unbreathable air. He knew he had to get out of there someway, somehow. That man was telling him, screaming at him to leave, but he couldn’t—he  _didn’t want_  to let go of the railing he was gripping so tightly with knuckles so white from fear and desperation. The hot metal seared painfully into his skin, but he wasn't paying attention to the fact that he was most likely getting himself a third degree burn. It was the man across from him in red, white, and blue.

It nearly pained him to see the man on the other side with nothing between them but explosions. The blazes of fire were reflected in the other man's glassy blue eyes. It would've been poetic if it hadn't been for the fact that there were this close to their deaths. He felt the urge to let out another scream—no, wait. He was screaming. A name lost in his subconscious, but something he knew he had said. Angry tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched the man leap across to the other side. 

He wasn't supposed to lose him. 

He couldn't lose him. 

_"I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal."_

Another explosion rattled the whole building, shaking him deep from his core. 

_"Don't ever fucking do that again, you stupid punk."_

The words echoed as the scenery began to change. The reds, oranges, and yellows of the fire had melted away in that dreamlike manner and had been swapped for the crisp blues and whites of the Alps. Or what he thought were the Alps.

This was new. 

It was snowing. There was a train. It was cold. Oh, so cold. 

He was standing on a ledge, the snow falling lightly and leaving a white dust on his shoulders. There was a group of them, standing, crouching around a radio of some kind. It looked old. He wasn't entirely sure why they were there. 

There was the man in red, white, and blue standing next to him on that ledge. He wasn't wearing his helmet, his blond hair flopping stupidly in the heavy wind. 

Blond hair. Strong jaw. Blue eyes. 

_"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?"_

He didn't sound so scared.

_"Yeah, and I threw up?"_

The other man wasn't either.

_"This isn't payback, right?"_

_"Now why would I do that?"_

Somehow, this felt all wrong. Something bad was going to happen, he could already feel it coming. 

But the man's voice... He was supposed to know. Why didn't he know?

Minutes felt like seconds, and soon, he was zip-lining down to the train, following the man in red, white, and blue. 

There were men waiting for them, guns cocked and loaded. 

There was a flash of metal. A shield like a target with its gaudy red and white and blue color scheme.

They were separated. He was being shot at. The both of them were being shot at. They were together again. 

Again.

Again.

Again. 

_“I had ‘im on the ropes.”_

The voice returned, and he was convinced that the words, feeling familiar yet heavy on his own tongue, were falling from his own lips. 

The rally of shots at such a close range left him sick and dizzy with exhaustion. The voice rang through the emptiness of the train, all strong and gruff with a Brooklyn accent tightly woven in its tone and inflection. It was his voice. He knew it was supposed to be his voice. He thought he had figured it all out, but he had never stepped foot in Brooklyn before. Not once in his entire life. 

Another explosion boomed in his ears and hit him harder than anything else.

This time, a cannon shooting something blue and something terrifying, aimed directly at the stupid shield that he could remember telling the man in red, white, and blue looked like a dumb ass target—but he never remembered saying that.  

(But the guy who shot the cannon was totally at an unfair advantage.)

He was suddenly thrown back with a great force, the blast from the weapon sending him flying right out of the side of the open train, and he wanted to scream but the words were stuck frozen in his throat, as he clung onto a chunk of metal that was already hanging so precariously off the side, the wind and snow hitting his face and the numbness prickling at his appendages. The wind whistled loudly in his ears now that he was swinging in open air. This was new. This was terrifying.

Was he going to die?

 _“Bucky! Grab my hand!"_  

Bucky… Bucky… Who the hell was Bucky? 

The man in red, white, and blue was scared, that he could tell. It was written all over his face—blond hair, strong jaw, blue eyes—and he knew that the same emotion was mirrored on his own face. The man was reaching for him, motions so desperate, hands trembling and breathing labored. When minutes felt like seconds, the seconds moved so slowly. He saw the man’s face crumpling, the expression of grief hurting more than the strain in his shoulder and cold wind biting at his exposed skin.

Because he was already falling.

Because the metal bar gave way to the weight of his body and the heavy winds.

Because it broke off the side of the train.

Because the wind was howling and the snow was swirling heavily around him.

Because the man in red and white and blue couldn't catch him in time.

Because that man lost someone he loved so dearly.

He watched as the train cut through the track, piercing through the blizzard and hiding in a tunnel, leaving him to be swallowed up by the snowstorm.  

But he wasn't screaming.  

He hit the ground. 

Another explosion.

This time, of pain.

He was still not screaming.

 

* * *

 

 

TJ shot up, a loud gasp ripping through his throat and through the stillness of the room, his face soaked with sweat and _were those tears?_  He furiously scrubbed at his cheeks, quickly ridding his skin of the salty wetness that fell from his eyes, before he felt anything akin to embarrassment. His wild gaze darted around the darkened room. The harsh, overhead lights had been shut off sometime while he was sleeping, but the room still glowed with the pale blue light that shone from the heart monitor near his bed. The beeping of the machine was already slowing down to a steady beat, his racing heart gradually calming down. He just hoped that the nurses didn't think he was having another episode. He'd rather they mind his own business. 

There was an odd chilling tremor that wracked through his body, the aftershocks of that horrible dream—nightmare—and he pulled the blankets up just for the comfort. But this chill was set deep in his bones, locked tight and trapped with no way to get out, choking him like a frozen vice. He felt distant from the warmth he desperately wanted the blankets to give him, but his whole body kept on trembling, as if he was in a never ending bout of hypothermia.  

He looked to his left and found the usual occupied seat next to his bed empty. He was alone, and he couldn’t have been more relieved. He wanted to be alone, that was really all he had been asking for these past few days, or actually, his entire life. TJ really didn’t want to deal with anyone at the moment, especially his overbearing mother. He loved her dearly, he really did, but her care felt more stifling than comforting. It was just _too much,_ and right now, when all he had done was fuck everything up by overdosing on cocaine, he would rather keep to himself than do anything to mess things up again.

He was a ticking time bomb. He knew it, his whole family knew it. Hell, even the whole world knew it. He had already gone off and exploded many times before. He was destruction on legs, but his family was too stupid to realize that he wasn't supposed to be fix. He shouldn't be fixed because that only made it worse. He had more ammunition, the time he exploded would create a larger mess. He was supposed to be left for dead, buried in the debris. 

And the cocaine was just the ammunition to set him off. Again.

He didn't deserve to live another second. 

“Fuck,” he hissed, running trembling fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. He heaved out a sigh, forcibly pushing the air out of his tight lungs and through his dry throat and mouth. There was no damn clock in his room, but he somehow knew that it was too fucking early to be awake.  

Dreams like that shouldn’t have left him so shaken up, but there was just something about them that TJ just couldn’t figure out. It was odd enough that the dreams happened to revolve around the same man—something he had deducted when he kept hearing the same voice speaking with that obnoxious Brooklyn drawl.  

Reoccurring dreams were supposed to mean something, weren’t they? 

But something was off about this dream in particular, something different, something that ran so much deeper than the average dream that pummeled through his brain on overdrive. He just couldn’t figure out what it was. The dreams usually just left him confused and eager for more. But this time, he was left choking, on edge, and with a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.  

His dreams usually didn’t take this much out of him. He felt exhausted—physically and emotionally. His fingers twitched, and he was starting to feel nauseous. Was it because of the dream or was he just having withdrawals?

This dream was more vivid than ever before. He felt the man’s emotion blazing through him like wildfire, and this had never occurred before until just then. It was longer, too. The part in the factory, the part with the train… he had never seen it before.  

Something was off. 

It felt real. 

It felt _too_ real. 

It felt like he was actually there, or he had been there once in his life. 

Blond hair, strong jaw, blues eyes.

The name he heard in his dream. 

Why did that man call him Bucky?

 

 

 

* * *

 

TJ started having these bizarre dreams ever since he woke up from his attempted suicide. He told no one, opting to suffer in silence with the peculiarity of the images that burned behind his eyelids in the forefront of his subconscious. He knew nobody would ever listen to him anyway. He was just a suicidal homosexual with reoccurring dreams of a man from Brooklyn. 

But that was months ago, back in December. 

He often brushed these dreams off, saying it was just the carbon monoxide in his brain making him see these things, but fast forward a few months, and nothing had changed.

For months, TJ’s subconscious was swimming with the same sepia-tinted visions, but it never occurred to him what exactly these visions were and what they were supposed to mean. The dreams were always about this one man in particular, but he never actually got to see the man’s face. He only ever heard his voice, which sounded so much like his own. And that’s what made it so surreal. It was as if TJ himself was in the man’s body, like _he_ was the man in those dreams.

His life outside of those dreams continued on. The sex, drugs, and alcohol seemed to help keep his mind off of them, but every time he closed his eyes, the dreams were still there to haunt him. The only person he seemed confident enough to confide in was his twin brother, Dougie. The rest of his family were left in the dark, having no idea that their beloved TJ Hammond was going crazy. He was convinced that if he did tell them his situation, they’d abandon him in a mental institute. 

Many people had drifted in and out of his dreams, his subconscious spitting out random stories he was still trying to piece together. A woman with a beautiful smile that was tight around the edges, her dark hair curled and pulled back into a bun. A little girl, beaming at him with her bright eyes and looking exactly like the woman with the bun. Another woman dressed usually like a nurse with hair like the sun, so kind and so caring. But there was one person in particular that TJ realized had a deeper connection with the man in the dream. A mouthy little blond who was as skinny as a stick. In fact, most of his dreams consisted of that stubborn firecracker. The only problem was that he didn’t know who any of these people were, and it was hard to make out who exactly they were, their true identities trapped and sealed in his subconscious. 

It wasn’t until after he had overdosed on cocaine that the dreams began to change. It was a different story. A new one. There was no more woman, no more little girl, no more nurse, no more stubborn punk. It was only a man in red, white, and blue. Someone so familiar yet felt like a stranger, all the same. The violence of this particular dream took him by surprise, like a low blow to his gut. There was no happiness, no laughter. It was just fucking heartbreaking.

Every night after the accident, it was always the same dream. The same voice. The same man. The same train. He just didn’t fucking understand what was going on his head. His nights were never peaceful, not anymore. 

His brother was also being no help, whatsoever. TJ told him what was happening in his dreams, and Dougie had the audacity to suggest that he talk to someone about it, which TJ haughtily replied with a stubborn, "Fuck you." He didn’t need a fucking therapist, _thank you very much_. 

But weeks passed—spent mostly lazing around and “getting help” at DC’s finest rehabilitation center—and something else started to bother him. It was something more than the dreams themselves. It took him awhile to realize it, but the overdose that landed him in the hospital for the second time triggered something deep in his subconscious. He could feel something prickling in the forefront of his mind whenever he was wide awake, but it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was going on.

He thought differently, sometimes feeling like everything was too damn expensive, like he was only living on a few dollars per day when in reality he was basically loaded because of his family—not like they were actually _giving_ him money anymore, especially after that "stunt," his father would sneer. At one point, he had the urge to make sure there was enough money on the table to buy both food  _and_ medication. But that didn't make any sense at all. He usually never had to buy the groceries; it was usually the help's job, and medication was just prescribed to him. He never gave the pill bottles a lasting thought. They were just  _there_ for him to take. They made him feel numb. 

He started to speak differently, too, using a Brooklyn accent that felt so out of place in Washington DC and the old time slang only his grandmother seemed to understand. (He called Anne “babydoll” once and asked her a flirtatious “Are you rationed?” without even realizing the words that were coming out of his mouth. Nana laughed so hard, she spilled her scotch all over the carpet. He was quick to apologize, blaming the high spirits at dinner and the booze he was currently nursing, but that only earned him a stern look from his mother. "I'm not drunk, Mama. I just had one drink," he had promised her. He couldn't avoid her stare all night.)

He even found himself almost buying some suspenders. He closed the window and slammed his laptop shut when he realized what he was just about to do.

Suspenders. For God's sake, what the fuck. 

The weird thing was that these behavioral changes were never consistent; they came and went so quickly that it was easy to brush them off once he overcame the odd looks his family and friends would shoot his way.

He tried explaining to his brother that he was feeling very different lately, but Dougie insisted that it had something to do with the fact that he just got discharged from the hospital after overdosing on cocaine. 

TJ almost believed him. He really shouldn't be conversing with a pragmatist like Dougie. 

He was still the same old Thomas James Hammond, but there was just _something else—_ someone else?—wanting to break through.

 

* * *

 

There was a time when TJ avoided going on the Internet and watching television like the plague, when his attempted suicide back in December was the only thing people were talking about, but he was bored, and the History Channel seemed like a safe bet. He was sure there wouldn’t be anything gossip-related, and there was nothing like watching shows that taught you random shit from history.

He was home alone (now, wasn’t that a good idea?), and it had been days since his discharge from rehab, and the dreams never seemed to cease. They still haunted him in his sleep, and he just wanted something to do to get his mind off of it all. 

_Red, white, blue._

_Train, explosions, falling._

_Blond hair, strong jaw, blue eyes._  

He soon began to realize that being sober was a fucking bore, but TJ was well aware that he couldn’t afford another slip up. And he really didn't want to land himself in the hospital for a third time. 

When he flipped to the channel, he saw that a documentary about Captain America was just about to start. TJ had learned all about him in his World and U.S. History classes in high school, had even aspired to be the Star Spangled Man with a Plan and learned how to play his theme song on the piano when he was younger, but now at thirty years old, Thomas James Hammond was so fucked up in the head with his drug addiction (that nearly killed him) and his never ending need to have a dick up his ass, that he was pretty sure Captain America _,_ his once idol and childhood hero, would be incredibly disappointed in him. Everyone was, so it really wouldn’t have been a surprise. 

Being the son of former President of the United States, Bud Hammond, everyone would have expected TJ to live a life full of ease and pleasure, but that actually wasn’t the case at all, even if he  _was_ the son of the most powerful man in America. Being forced out of the closet and being constantly under the spotlight was enough to drive him insane. 

The world of politics was a jungle, and TJ was still trying to navigate his way through the thick of it—even if sex, drugs, and alcohol were the only things keeping his head on his shoulders… but only just barely. And now, not even drugs and alcohol were going to help him block out the unnecessary stupidity and animalistic tendencies of the political world. TJ was a clean slate. A fucked up clean slate with two near-death experiences under his belt, nonetheless.

Shifting his attention back to the TV screen, he began to take notice that the documentary focused more on Steve Rogers and his life before the war rather than the national icon himself, the commentator spitting out information he already knew and learned when he was young and kind of had a crush on him, “ _Captain_ _Steven Grant Rogers was born on Thursday, July 4, 1918, to Sarah and Joseph Rogers in Brooklyn, New York City...”_  

TJ usually checked himself out during these kinds of things—the monotonous tone of the commentator almost always making him fall asleep—but he realized that he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen, his mind quickly enraptured by the man on the screen. He’d never paid this much attention to Captain America ever since his younger self threw that stupid dream away, but for some odd reason, the screen had this incessant pull on him. It was as if his body had shut down to fall under somebody else’s control. Whose control, he did not know exactly. 

That horrible sinking feeling he always got after his dreams suddenly appeared, settling in his stomach like a thick, heavy lead ball. 

The first strike hit him hard, and it was a more recent photo of Steve Rogers in his Captain America suit before the color dissolved and left a black-and-white photo of Steve before he was beefed up with the serum. 

Blond hair. Strong jaw. Blue eyes.

_A mouthy little blond who was as skinny as a stick._

He felt like he couldn't breathe.

The second strike was a picture of Sarah Rogers after it had taken the place of a shot of Steve’s childhood home, appearing in all its sepia-toned glory on his TV screen. Usually by then, TJ would’ve made a snide remark about the horrible transitions all of these documentaries used. But something about this photo hit him in the most peculiar way. His temple began to prickle as the lady in the picture soon became strikingly familiar. 

_A kind and caring woman dressed like a nurse, hair bright like the sun._

The thought flittered through his brain before he could even help it.

The air was definitely out of his lungs by now.

Was this how an asthma attack felt like? 

The picture of Steve's mom then dissolved into darkness, and the commentator was back on the TV screen, appearing to be walking down some street. The man droned on,  _"Sarah Rogers, already a single mother by the time Steve was only a few months old, did everything she could to keep a roof over both of their heads and her own little boy living. Year after year, Steve was struck hard by ailments far and wide. Asthma. Arrhythmia. Scoliosis. Colorblindness. A weak immune system. And that's only to name a few."_ **  
**

The commentator's voice buzzed in his ears. He wasn't exactly listening at this point as he was slowly losing himself to his own thoughts. 

The third strike wasn't a picture this time.

_"... James Buchanan Barnes, most commonly known as Captain Rogers' second-in-command and long time best friend, Bucky Barnes."_

Even hearing the name got him reeling as the prickle in his temple slowly grew into a full blown headache. He pressed his fingers firmly to his pounding temples, hoping to the relieve the pain, but it only seemed to aggravate the problem instead of mitigate it. 

The final straw was when the screen showed a family photo. A  _Barnes_ family photo. 

_A woman with a beautiful smile that was tight around the edges, her dark hair curled and pulled back into a bun._

Winifred Barnes... Ma.

_A little girl, beaming at him with her bright eyes and looking exactly like the woman with the bun.  
_

Rebecca... Little Becca. 

No, no,  _no_.

"What. The.  _Fuck,_ " TJ muttered through gritted teeth, his eyes screwed shut and his hands fisted roughly into his hair as he so desperately wished for the pain to stop. Instead of dulling, the pain did the exact opposite and flared up into a thrumming ache. This was so much worse than a hangover. He would rather have  _that_ than deal with the pounding headache that was hammering harshly against his skull. He wasn't sure what was happening to him or why it was happening to him in the first place. 

The scream fell from his lips before he could even register what was going on. The pain was too great, and it had escalated to the point where he thought his brain was actually melting from the hot, searing pain that was being inflicted to his head.

He passed out.

 

* * *

 

_"32557038..."_

Thomas James Hammond.

_"Sergeant James Barnes..."_

Call me TJ. 

 _"...of the 107th."_  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me on [tumblr ](hvydrtysoldier.tumblr.com) :)


	2. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winifred speaks to her son.

_“Did you get your orders?”_

There he was again surrounded by a haze of sepia-toned and muted colors, back in the world of simple times, riddled heavily with war, and he could already tell that this dream was much tamer than the ones before.

_“The 107th.”_

He heard himself say to a man with blond hair, strong jaw, blue eyes. He was much smaller now, the bulging muscles gone and protruding ribs taking their place. He held himself with a hunch, a soft wheezing noise rattling through his chest, but that wasn’t what he _~~Bucky?~~_ was looking at. All he could see, all he could focus on, was the blood -- red, red blood -- dripping from the man’s nose, contrasting starkly with the soft baby blues of the man’s eyes.

_“Sergeant James Barnes.”_

He was seeing, watching. He was being. He was…

_“Shipping for England first thing tomorrow.”_

Where was he going?

 _The war, ~~Thomas~~ ~~T.J.~~   ~~James~~ ~~Bucky~~_. _You’re going to war._ The thought filtered into his brain, the words spoken to him as if they were part of a monologue that was read quietly as a scene played on.

 _You died, but you’re coming back, James Buchanan Barnes._  

_Your soul is still alive._

 

* * *

 

He was falling, falling, falling. Slowly into the dark depths of the unknown. The terror was gripping at his chest as he stared, wide-eyed, at the darkness above him. He knew that if he tried to turn his head, he would only meet the dark nothingness that surrounded him on all sides.

He was screaming -- he was so sure he was -- but his ears met silence and nothing else. He heard nothing as the infinite darkness consumed him.

He was falling.

But when you fall, isn't there something to catch you in the end? You can fall for what seems like forever, but there was always going to be something there to break it. So when was he going to meet the end?

Then, all of the sudden, the darkness was met with a light so bright and blinding that he squeezed his eyes shut to block it out. The white light came up in periodic bursts, almost like explosions. Further and further up the white light went, and further and further up did the darkness go away. It was if the light was sucking up the darkness, shrouding his entire being with a brightness that rivaled the Sun itself. But it didn’t burn when it touched his skin.

He was falling. And then… He was not.

 

* * *

 

He opened his eyes and was met with solid white, a stark contrast to the dark abyss that he was sure would have led to his death. But here he was, in this sea of white that seemed to go on forever in all directions.

He looked to his left. White.

He looked to his right. White.

He looked behind him. White.

He looked in front of him. White.

It was all fucking white. What the fuck was this place?

“Where am I?” He asked, his voice ringing out with an echo that chilled him down to his bone. He took a few steps forward but found that moving around in all this white in search of something would only be a waste of his time. But it seemed like, in a place like this, time was only a mere concept of nothing and everything.

And suddenly, the voice that joined him wasn’t anything he had ever heard. It was unfamiliar, and yet, it still brought some kind of warmth that ran deep into his core. It reminded him of warm apple pies and soft, honey lullabies.

_You are home, Bucky._

The answer he was given startled a laugh out of him. His name wasn’t Bucky (or was it? _**No**_ , it wasn’t). This place wasn’t home. This was just a white plane of nothing, and if this lady didn’t tell him where the fuck he was, he was going to scream.

Christ, he needed to calm down. He was getting angry over some disembodied voice that sounded like his mother but didn’t. He really _**was**_ going insane.

“Seriously, where am I?” He asked again, his patience starting to wear thin.

_A place where you can be yourself._

The laughter that burst out of him sounded bitter. He was so damn tired. “Really. A place where I can be myself. Well, isn’t that just great?” He muttered; though by himself, his quiet voice sounded like he was actually yelling.

_Do not worry, Bucky. You will learn very soon who were you meant to be._

He snorted. “Yeah, and what’s that?”

_Close your eyes, and you will see._

He glared at the white sky above him. “Are you fucking serious?”

But even with the incredulity that was pumping angrily through his veins, his body seemed to have a mind of its own. He couldn’t fight the drowsiness that was beginning to overcome him. His eyelids drooped heavily, and his limbs grew slack. He felt himself tip sideways as the white turned right back into black.

He was falling.

 

* * *

 

_Bucky…_

_Bucky…_

_Wake up, Bucky…_  

 

* * *

 

T.J. (Bucky-- _**No**_.) woke up in his apartment, lying face-down on the hardwood floor, with a puddle of drool pooling at his mouth. This wasn’t the first time he had woken up like this -- he had woken up in far less attractive positions --but this was the only time where alcohol and drugs hadn’t been involved.

“Fuck,” he muttered, struggling up into an upright position.

He was quick to notice that the migraine in his head had lessened a bit, but he could still feel a dull pounding behind his left eye. And the sad part of it was that he wasn’t even allowed to take any meds to relieve him from this kind of pain.

He pushed himself off the floor with a groan and got up onto his feet, forcing himself to drag his body back to the couch to lie down. He saw that the TV was still on, but the Captain America had already concluded, another droning documentary taking its place. But his mind kept drifting off elsewhere, his brain flickering with the dream that left him more confused than anything. There was something about that dream was different. It wasn’t like the others for sure. But he just couldn’t seem to place his finger on it. It started off normally. Always with the sepia-toned visions that more often than not left him feeling something akin to deja vu whenever he woke up.

He mentally made a checklist of the things that he found were different.

The black abyss.

The bright white light.

The white space of nothing.

The sweet, motherly disembodied voice.

The repetition of a name he didn’t call his own.

None of it made sense to him. What did the voice mean when she said he was going to learn who he was meant to be?

Shit, he needed to get out of here. He was only going to make himself go stir-crazy with all of this wallowing. He had to go out for the walk or something. Take his mind off of whatever this was. He was too damn tired to figure this out on his own.

So, with one uttered “fuck it,” T.J. grabbed his phone and keys with trembling hands and headed out the door with no particular destination in mind.

God, a drink would've been great right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, look who finally updated. Just don't send any pitchforks and torches my way, alright? I know it isn't very long, but it's as much as I can come up with a such a short period of time without writer's block. 
> 
> And as the title of the chapter says, this chapter acts as more an interlude between T.J.'s self-awareness and his actual meeting with Steve. 
> 
> As always, you can catch me on tumblr, URL: ycurbcuky.


	3. Author's Note

First of all, thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this wonderful fic. It sure has brought me joy seeing so many enjoy what I have written. However, it is apparent that I've neglected this fic, and that is all on me. Life got in the way, like it always does. But please, do not give up hope. I am hoping to revamp this story, so while I'll be abandoning this particular work, I'll be working on the new and improved version of this story. And because of that, I am more than happy to find someone to help me with story ideas and to help me through writing this fic. Because I very much need that push to write it. 

Thank you, and have a wonderful day!

LC


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